


Libations for the Dead

by ZaliaChimera



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Cemetery, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, Past Character Death, Sad, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Season/Series 04, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 13:08:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18873808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZaliaChimera/pseuds/ZaliaChimera
Summary: Six months later, six months out of synch with everyone he knows, Jon keeps solitary vigil.





	Libations for the Dead

“Hello Tim.”

It’s quite a nice place actually, all neatly mown grass, the cherry trees just starting to bloom, and the rows and rows of headstones. 

It is peaceful in a way that is all about the living. The dead don’t really care. 

Jonathan Sims crouches down in front of the headstone. He hadn’t needed to look very hard. It’s one of the newest ones here, and as soon as he’d stepped into the cemetery, he’d just known where to go. 

“You’d hate that, wouldn’t you, Tim?” Jon says. He reaches out towards the headstone, but drops his fingers back to his side before he can touch it. “Knowing things. Just one more bit of evidence that I’m a monster. One more reminder of- of this.”

Maybe it’s a blessing. He can imagine how Tim would have reacted to all of this, to Jon waking up after six months of no pulse, no breath, just endless dreams. It wouldn’t have been pretty. Might even have outdone Melanie’s reaction. He’d gladly deal with it if it meant that Tim wasn’t here, under the cold earth. That’s probably a selfish wish though. 

He sits down on the grass in front of the headstone. It’s well tended, clean and manicured. There’s a pot of daffodils at the base of the headstone, and a photograph in a frame. After a moment of hesitation, Jon picks it up. It’s a little faded by the sun and winter rain by now, the colours coming unstuck and melting into each other. He recognises Tim, but he’s younger in the picture, has his arm around another man who looks strikingly similar. 

His brother, Jon Knows suddenly. He’d never seen him, but the similarities are striking. They look young and happy, full of life, before The Stranger had set them on this awful path that ends with two headstones and a parents’ grief for lost children.

Jon sets the picture back down. Feels guilty for looking in the first place, like he’s intruding on something intimate, something that he shouldn’t be privy to.

He opens his mouth to speak and then closes it again, the words dying in his throat. He hasn’t exactly had anyone to talk to about this. Hasn’t had anyone to talk to about anything. 

He chews on his bottom lip for a moment and then reaches into his bag. He pulls out the bottle of whisky that he’d brought with him. It’s a good single malt, three quarters empty. He uncorks it and takes a deep breath of the smoky liquid. 

“Remember this? We drank it when I got my promotion to Head Archivist. You said it was something worth celebrating.” He can’t hold back a small, bitter laugh at that, and shakes his head. “I sometimes wonder if I’d refused the promotion, stayed in research- but I’m not sure how much difference it would have made. I’m not sure I could have chosen any other way and-“

He shakes his head. “Sorry. Anyway, I found it in the bottom of my desk the other day. I thought it would be long gone but- I had such a hangover the morning after we celebrated. First time I actually called in sick to work. Worth it though.”

It feels like that was the last time he’d been happy, the last time he’d not felt some constant niggling fear at the back of his mind every moment. It probably wasn’t, but in his mind there is a definite Before and After. Before the Archives, when he had just been Jonathan Sims, awkward and sarcastic and too serious, and After, when the parts that were Jon were packed into smaller and smaller boxes while the Archivist spread and unfurled inside him.

“I’m sorry it took so long for me to come and visit. I probably shouldn’t be here anyway. I know I’m not welcome. But these visits are never for the dead really, are they?”

He had spoken at his grandmother’s funeral, looked out at the pews of people he was barely familiar with. She had been an active woman, even more after Jon had gone to university, and he’d felt somehow like an impostor there amongst them. They had known his grandmother, had seen her at her best, shared laughter and friendship with her. He had just been the child foisted onto her. She had loved him in her own way, cared for him, but once he’d left for university, there hadn’t been eager phone calls home or weekend visits. They had never been friends.

Everyone else at the funeral had been people she’d wanted.

“I know, turning up seven months late with alcohol isn’t exactly the greatest impression. I shouldn’t have come but-“

He raises the bottle to his lips and takes a swig. It warms his throat and settles in his stomach. The cemetery probably has rules about not drinking, but no-one else is going to enter while he’s here. He Knows it. Generally humans know better than to disturb monsters, especially ones that are grieving.

“They’ve all moved on,” he says after a moment. “No, moved on isn’t- it’s not the right word.” And words are important. “They’ve had time. To grieve. To mourn. I’m living six months in the past and they won’t- they barely remembered to tell me what had happened to you. Because to them this is-“  
Another sip of scotch. His stomach reminds him that he hasn’t eaten today. Should have grabbed something at the station.

“They grieved while I was- well, I’m not sure. They called it a coma but that’s because there isn’t a nice neat medical term for ‘no vital functions except off the charts brain activity’.” He gives a huff of a laugh and scrubs his hand over his face. “But I was gone, and I wasn’t there. I didn’t get to- I didn’t get to say goodbye. Not properly. They just told me when I woke up, and then it was back to work. No funeral. No prayers or wake or awkward condolences to the family. Just an empty desk.”

There are too many empty desks in the Archives these days. 

But he isn’t here for them, not right now. He’s here for Tim. For the Tim he had been friends with, and the Tim who had hated him, and the Tim who had thanked him at the end. The one who had saved the world.

“There are so very many things that I wish I could change. I wish I had trusted you. You deserved that. You were- you were the first friend I made at the Institute. I’m not good at making friends. Had precious few of them during University, and I- I burned most of those bridges.” He smiles, and can feel the bitterness dripping from his lips. “I guess I’m good at that. Practically a habit.”

If he’d just spoken to them more, if he’d trusted more- ah, but what-ifs never help. What if I’d trusted them more leads as easily to ‘the Not-Them slaughters us and uses our skins for the Unknowing’ as it does ‘Tim and I remain friends’. 

“I am sorry though. You probably don’t want to hear it, but I need- I need to say it while it still means something to me. I’m not sure how long that will be the case. I’m not sure of a lot of things. I just-“

He takes a deep breath, lets it out. It stutters inside him and he tries again.

“You mattered Tim. You saved the world. And I miss you. I miss your jokes, and your flirting, and your anger. I miss you, and I hope I never stop.”

Jon looks down at the bottle and the remains of the scotch and takes another swig. Then he upends the bottle and pours the rest of it out onto the ground at the base of the headstone. A libation for the dead. It seems fitting somehow. 

“I won’t be back. I just- I hope you are at peace, Tim. Take care.”

Jon packs the empty bottle back into his bag. No sense leaving it to cause some small grief to his family. He gives the headstone one more look. And then he walks away, and lets his human words drift into the wind.

**Author's Note:**

> You can also come and scream at me on [tumblr](https://zalia.tumblr.com/)


End file.
